And now from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN, the Axviles, with your

host, David Axelrod.

Jackie Combs is a flat out great journalist.

She's been at it for many years, starting as small papers in Texas, working her way up

to 18 years at the Wall Street Journal and another eight at the New York Times as one

of the most respected writers on politics and government in Washington.

Jackie has extraordinary insights into that town and also the working class neighborhoods

in which she grew up and which she's covered, as you'll hear in this conversation.

Jackie Combs always good to welcome a daughter of the Midwest to the Axviles.

Great to be here.

And to the Institute of Politics, you're one of the preeminent journalists in the country.

But before we get to that, I just want to talk to how you became to you about how you became

one of the preeminent journalists in the country because it wasn't faded by your upbringing

in Toledo, Ohio.

Jackie Combs, I didn't know any journalists or how to do it.

But you and I are about the same age and there's a lot of people who, when I started journalism

because of the time it was, I started college after, well, Watergate was going on while

I was in college.

Well Bernstein on the podcast, talking about those days and, you know, I was one like

you, one of those people who were inspired to journalism by what Woodward and Bernstein

did in their time.

Well, see, and people assume that of me, but I wasn't inspired by them.

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